Lupiverse(es)

Craig Brewer · 15 Mar 2012, 23:46 · from 2012-March.txt.gz
This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.
From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:46:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
In-Reply-To: <CAJ8=rthWZ-3w2s-7XT-bkuDGLBSOp=nyseyMqghEmY3GfbBKQw at mail.gmail.com>
References: <SNT123-W51B170E1E982B63882B931CF590 at phx.gbl>
	<1331737802.36157.YahooMailNeo at web121001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
	<4F60CA8B.8060407 at gmail.com>
	<1331744686.23213.YahooMailNeo at web121005.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
	<CAGB0RZ4OB_A_tagJfoNZ4vid4iF+Mu3QL8cjKq3di3xDFA1L1g at mail.gmail.com>
	<BD0E4F6B-40FC-4081-B258-E011D29B1C15 at gmail.com>
	<CAGB0RZ7E8EE3e_kUjTQK2Q-5QiZkQRKzAFoq2+-22tuZMFbCOQ at mail.gmail.com>
	<CAJ8=rthWZ-3w2s-7XT-bkuDGLBSOp=nyseyMqghEmY3GfbBKQw at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1331855173.81013.YahooMailNeo at web121002.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>

Yep. I'm not Catholic, but it doesn't really matter. I don't like Wolfe because I *believe* him or have to share his worldview. I'm not looking to have myself confirmed in someone else's fiction.

But those who read him with a real eye for a kind of esoteric knowledge or even for certain gnostic insights might. But those readings also often overlook the story in favor of the background.



________________________________
 From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 2:19 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
 
Hear, hear!

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Daniel Petersen
<danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, said better than I did. ?However, now I'm wanting to qualify: ?let's
> not de-fang the Wolfe. ?He has bite and we shouldn't begrudge him that. ?If
> some writer clearly portrays Marxism or Secular Humanism in his or her work,
> so many readers have a tendency to praise this as clever and wise and
> somehow morally commendable. ?But when a Christian author does the same with
> their faith, well, it had at least better not be too overt and should
> definitely be open-ended, etc. ?As I say, I do think Wolfe is marvelously
> generous and humble about 'sharing' his faith in his fiction (to reduce a
> very complex artistry to a cliche - apologies), but I do think his overall
> body of work is fairly clearly pointing in the direction of Catholicism
> being true and good and the 'way of salvation'. ?AND THAT'S FINE. ?(Mind,
> that an 'evangelical' 'Protestant' is saying this - by some lights I should
> be drawing my dagger.) ?It would have been just as fine if the work had
> pointed in some other direction - atheism or Hinduism or whatever. ?An
> author is well within his or her 'artistic rights' to signal such
> trajectories provided there is an integrity to the craft that shows a real
> respect to the intelligence and diversity of readerly viewpoints.
>
> It's ridiculous that I have to spell out 'permission' for Wolfe or any other
> writer this way - but I know for a fact that a whiff of any *definite*
> Christian belief in fiction turns many readers off - my creative writing
> instructor just last night expressed her disdain for Narnia once she
> discovered that the wonderful fantasy she'd read as a child turned out to be
> Christian in theme. ?If she had a beef with the artistry that would be
> completely understandable, but her critique was couched only in terms of the
> 'religious faith' the works evinced. ?In my opinion, that is not a good
> reason to dislike a work. ?I'll say it again, I love some atheist writing
> because it is so well written AND because their 'message' is powerfully
> wrought and challenging (NOT because there is no message at all or because
> it is barely discernible and I can easily ignore it if I want to) - and I
> abhor other atheist writing because the craft is poor and/or the 'message'
> is smug and/or brow-beating and/or lacks nuance and rich 'embodiment'. ?If a
> work of art is an overt, beautiful, powerful statement of the artist's
> worldview and a deep challenge to my own - why should I shrink from that?
> ?Why should any of us?
>
> PLEASE (EVERYONE) LISTEN TO THIS IF NOTHING ELSE:
> I'm worried that some here can only stomach Wolfe if he can be kept
> ambiguous about Catholic orthodoxy and that if it could ever be shown that
> HIS FICTION clearly 'favours' the Church, then they would be out. ?I'm
> beginning to wonder if the need to keep that at bay fuels a lot of the
> debate here. ?If so, I think it mistaken. ?We could easily accept that his
> work points this way and the discussion and analysis would be FAR from done
> with - so very far. ?If that's not the case and people are arguing for a
> non-Catholic or Catholic-ambiguous reading of Wolfe because they genuinely
> see the evidence pointing that way - and if they became convinced otherwise,
> they would NOT then abandon the discussion - then that is, of course, very
> different. ?No one needs my stamp of approval for anything I realise. ?I'm
> just airing this opinion.
>
> -DOJP
>
> 2012/3/15 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
>>
>> I believe the difference is quite clear. While 'proselytising' authors
>> present their worldview as being superior - which is quite lame and
>> irritating, since the reader has no control over events and can merely,
>> aware of it or not, watch them unfold in the way the author wants them to so
>> they will support the author's views -, authors like Wolfe build upon their
>> worldview to enrich their work, not to dictate its shape. I don't think one
>> needs to share Wolfe's beliefs, or even tolerate them, or even find them
>> interesting, in order to derive pleasure from Wolfe's work. Wolfe is not
>> writing books to show Catholicism is great or offend non-Catholics, at all.
>> Wolfe's stories do not unfold in certain ways so that catholic ideals are
>> vindicated and others put to shame. Rather I think his perspective on
>> religion poses certain questions and provides certain answers, and he tries
>> to build on that in order to weave more questions and a number of equally
>> valid answers into his work. If you happen to share his beliefs, you'll find
>> that certain questions and answers resonate and lead you to an increased
>> appreciation of those same beliefs, but if you don't, you're only losing
>> because you can't enjoy resonance of something you don't have, not because
>> someone is locking you out or trying to influence you.
>> I'm very ignorant of Lewis in order to know how he compares. I know
>> Tolkien well enough to have much the same opinion of him as I have of Wolfe
>> - though I also see a lot of differences.
>>
>>
>> No dia 14/03/2012, ?s 22:36, Daniel Petersen
>> <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> escreveu:
>>
>> Well, I'm way behind in all the gritty details of this debate, but (that's
>> where you all stop reading - ach, well)... Just because Wolfe is no Card (is
>> that a pun?) doesn't mean he can't be a clearly spiritual (and, dare I say
>> it, 'evangelistic') writer in his own way. ?I, at least, have found a richly
>> rendered 'incarnational' and 'improvisational' sort of 'apologia' and
>> 'euangelion' (yes, radically distinct in many important ways from the likes
>> of Chesterton or Lewis) IN THE TEXTS of the Solar Cycle, an invitational and
>> 'subversive' Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy (be they ever so slyly
>> idiosyncratic) that basically 'triumphs' over all the other systems (e.g.
>> from polytheism to gnosticism) in a theo-comedic 'underdog' sort of way (for
>> those who wish to see it - Wolfe is no bully). ?[Akin to St Paul's 'cosmic
>> judo' sort of atonement theology in Colossians 2:15.]
>>
>> I believe that this being the case in no way shuts down or closes the
>> 'infinite play of meaning' that his narratives clearly intend to induce.
>> ?But it does give that play certain contours and trajectories if we want to
>> acknowledge them.
>>
>> I hope to write about it in more detail some day...
>>
>> -DOJP
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Urth Mailing List
>> To post, write urth at urth.net
>> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net



-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
_______________________________________________
Urth Mailing List
To post, write urth at urth.net
Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20120315/3f2a981d/attachment.htm>
An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net